Study on the Analysis of Medical App for the management of chronic diseases

Contracting party: Italian Ministry of Health – Medical Device and Pharmaceutical Service General Direction

Period: 2017 - 2018

Description:

The project, running on three different medical branches (cardiology, diabetology and nephrology), consists of a Medical App trial with apps currently available on online stores, to carry out with support and collaboration of specialized healthcare structures.

The project foresees:

• the identification of stakeholders, meaning healthcare structure to invite participating to the selection and trial of medical app
• the selection of 10 medical apps, particularly directed to chronical diseases, pinpointed between the available ones in the online stores. At the start-up, the selection will be carried out with criteria designed to match the app with the feature to monitor epidemiologic data linked to the selected chronical diseases.
• the realization of a medical app trial protocol, based on the requirements pointed out by the involved healthcare experts about chronical diseases cure, diagnosis and prevention pathways. The trial will use the website appsanitarie.it to share information between the identified stakeholders. At the same time appsanitarie.it will provide a private area that will serve as repository of medical app census and monitoring results.
• the analysis of the selected apps that will forecast for the pinpointed medical branches activities that aims to identify:
• Technical aspects (devices, features and peripheral devices, usability etc.);
• Interoperability (meaning the app interaction with other apps or systems);
• Privacy compliance;
• App security level;
• Clinical aspects such as the efficacy and efficiency improvement from the app usage